Study of the breakfast habits and its relationship with some factors in Semnan (Iran) pupils

Proper nutrition is one of the essential factors to well being for children and adolescents. Meanwhile, breakfast has a major role to supply their requirement nutrients and energy. There are some experimental evidences that suggest that omitting breakfast negatively affects cognitive functioning. This survey was performed to study of breakfast habits and its relationships with some factors in Semnan (Iran) pupils during 2006. In this descriptive analytical study, 1193 pupils in different educational grades were selected by the multistage cluster sampling. Data were collected by using a questionnaire and analyzed with Kruskal Wallis, Mann - Whitney and Spearman Coefficient Correlation tests using SPSS software. The mean and standard deviation of age was 12.4±3.3 years old. 50.7% of them were boys and 49.3% were girls. 53.4% of the pupils stated that they always eat breakfast and the rest of them, do not eat irregularly. 4.4% of the pupils said they never eat breakfast. In this study, there was significant relationship between breakfast habits and age (P<.01), educational grade (P<.0001), sex (P<.0001), the time of getting up in the morning (P<.0001), sleeping time at night (P<.0001), the education of pupil’s mother (P<.04), the education of pupil’s father (P<.05), the birth rank (P<.05) and the intervention of pupils in the breakfast planning (P<.0001). According to pupils’ breakfast for three continuous days, the relative consumption of bread (2.26), tea (2.20) and cheese (1.66) was higher than other foods, such as milk, walnut, honey, egg, fruit and fruit juice. These finding showed that pupils need to learn more about both irregular intake of breakfast and various intake of nutritious foods and this issue must be considered by different authorities.